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Poor in Tech

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Re: Poor in Tech

#631

Post by kelnos »

tasuki wrote: post #525
machello13 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you literally said, but why bring it up?

I'm just trying to put into perspective "poor people around the world" vs "poor people in the US". From my pov, if one can afford a car, it's a little rich to call oneself poor when compared to all the people who can't afford basic necessities. And no, a car isn't a basic necessity, not even in the US.

In most places in the US, if you don't have a car, you can't get to your job. Or you can, but it involves a fragile set of bus transfers that take you 2 hours (when driving would take 30 minutes) each way, and if you miss a transfer (because the transfers don't actually line up with any reasonable schedule), you're late and risk getting fired. So instead you add a 30 minute buffer in the morning and waste even more of your time.

Or you can walk 5 miles each way. Maybe it's good for your health (though the winters might be brutal where you live, and your route might not have sidewalks, and walking into work covered in sweat in the summer might not be allowed where you work), but that's pushing 2 hours each way as well. Getting a bicycle would reduce the time requirement, but most streets in the US are pretty bike-hostile, and you still have the weather issues to contend with.

Sure, technically a car is not "required" in that scenario, but people who are poor essentially have their time as one of their few precious assets. Saving 3-4 hours a day on a commute could mean picking up another job[0] that helps reduce financial insecurity just a little bit, or allowing a parent to spend a little more time with their kids.

I think people just really don't understand what it means to be poor. I have (fortunately) never experienced it, but have heard enough first-hand accounts to get the gist of it. Everything is harder when you don't have money. Everything.

[0] And that's a whole other issue, that so many jobs don't pay a living wage, requiring someone to hold down more than one just to make ends meet.

Re: Poor in Tech

#632

Post by bumby »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #569
swader999 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't give credit to luck enough imo.

Yes .. but. I had a great education/CV early in my career, and had the opportunity to interview at some of the top most companies prior to their IPO (some when they were tiny companies). Google, Facebook, Stripe and maybe 3 more that went on to be billion dollar exits. I screwed up every single time. Either I did not take the interview seriously, or took a more prestigious academic job compared to the start up opport…

I like the phrase "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity". So when you say you made bad decisions, didn't take it seriously, etc. it sounds like you recognize your own culpability in creating bad "luck".

There is something to be said for overcoming the inertia of the (bad) ideas we may have been raised with. Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers how wealthy parent raise their children to be more assertive. One of his examples was a "genius" child with a 195 IQ who couldn't reach his goal of a PhD because of the ingrained passivity his parent taught him, which caused him to accept limitations he was told without questioning. To that extent, if we can't overcome those bad ideas, we're creating bad luck for ourselves.

And please don't take this as me piling on, because it's fairly clear from your post that you are still bothered by this. I imagine it's because you spend a lot of time imagining "what could have been", but to quote Theodore Roosevelt "comparison is the thief of joy". If you can get to a point where you're grateful for what you have rather than mulling over what you missed out on, you'll probably be happier for it. Genuinely wishing you the best of "luck" in the future.

Re: Poor in Tech

#633

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

DethNinja wrote: post #94

How much of that experience is true in USA startup scene? I feel like this might be a special case for SF. Because here in Canada most of the people who work at tech aren’t rich at all and they tend to be more nerdy than snobby. I guess fintech scene might be more classist though.

None of it's reflective of my decade plus working in the bay area. I think I've met just a couple people like that. There are almost certainly social bubbles like that, though, but that's not the vast majority of us.

Re: Poor in Tech

#634

Post by Haruiko »

underdeserver wrote: post #495
Haruiko wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following your argument. You share the same space. How distant are you with other people that you can't just say hi? Does it matter if you don't discuss politics after it? When i was a kid, i had to take the bus and i forgot my bus ticket (a pupil, on one bus stop, everyday, the same bus stop the same bus driver on a school route...) and he put a lot of energy into telling me off. A few days/weeks later i tho…

The janitor knows that if he pisses you off in any way, you might complain and he would lose his job, which he probably can't afford to. Why risk it?

People are always quite open to me, never had the issue that they didn't take the risk.

Re: Poor in Tech

#635

Post by kelnos »

swader999 wrote: post #444
_underfl0w_ wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier to do in some places than others. Public transport is nonexistent in several places here in Texas for example - you have to have a car (or know someone who does) to get to your job in the first place. But commuting puts wear and tear on the car, especially if you can't find work particularly close to where you live.

I read a book once on extreme early retirement that advised to pick your place of work and house so that they were within walking distance of each other and also walking distance to a grocery store. The quality of the work and even your income weren't as critical as this. The idea being the goal was to finish work as soon as possible in your life when investment income could take over. Live in a one room rental, have…

I would find that kind of Spartan life to be pretty bleak and depressing. Sure, some people would like it, but I expect most people would not.

Re: Poor in Tech

#636

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

schmookeeg wrote: post #357

Does living in Oakland really draw arched eyebrows like as stated in the article? Do the neighboring areas like Emeryville, Alameda, or Lafayette do that? (moving down to SF in a month or two, so just starting to get a feel for east bay ;) )

No, not at all. Oakland draws zero arched eyebrows (in my circles at least, which are made up of everyone from struggling to ultra-wealthy). If anything it's seen as a cooler place to live now that SF is stereotyped as boring techies.

Re: Poor in Tech

#637

Post by unbalancedevh »

username90 wrote: post #370
StavrosK wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not about smartness or dumbness, though. I don't think intelligence is correlated with poverty much, but poverty is additional difficulty, so they have to work harder for the same thing as someone who isn't poor.

But that isn't an issue where I'm from. The lifestyle difference between people with degrees and working class is tiny since the wage gaps are so small, and then add all government aids paying for everything including school lunches, daycare, college, healthcare etc on top of that. But still people from working class households perform extremely poorly. Helping them isn't about making them smarter or unlocking new po…

It still doesn't necessarily come down to intelligence. It could just as well be motivation, or laziness, or other social pressures.

Re: Poor in Tech

#638

Post by tomp »

It's interesting how differently her generalizations are received on HN, vs. Paul Graham's, even though her's are (IMO) much more extreme.

I won't be the same as her, though, and say that all poor people complain and that all poor people steal. I'm just gonna say, she's a negative, immoral person.

Re: Poor in Tech

#639

Post by gumby »

pnutjam wrote: post #462
Applejinx wrote: post #155

"Three paychecks is a month and a half of income (rent and two car payments by my fevered calculations, which never stop)" Pay attention to those last three words. This is very important. I've been on both sides too, and to me those words are like a slap in the face: stark reality. If you're poor enough (relative to the costs of your life) you are at a constant exhausting deficit because you CANNOT stop calculating a…

I noticed where the writer found out they were the lowest paid person. This is how the wealthy class really keep people from moving up. Your pay is forever tied to what you used to make. It's hard enough to break the circuit in your mind, it's near impossible to do so with your employer. At my current employer, they offered me a 10% paycut to convert from contract to FTE. I could not afford that, but I also can't aff…

> The next guy to convert, was able to negotiate harder and I believe he ended up with a higher rate

This is why salary negotiations are inherently unfair* (and salary info does get around even in companies that try to keep it secret -- if it's fair who cares if it gets around?)

* unfair because of an asymmetry: a hiring manager with any experience will have a higher n in negotiating hires than any employee will have negotiating their own comp. Also unfair because it pays for more for a skill not needed in most jobs (negotiating a feature in or out of a codebase is not the same thing). It is fair when the job calls for it (e.g. CEO or a VP of Business Development)

Re: Poor in Tech

#640

Post by w0de0 »

dang wrote: post #689
dang wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a case of the contrarian dynamic: an initial wave of objections to the article, followed by a wave of objections to the objections. The latter get upvoted, and so we end up with a top comment saying "I can't believe the comments in this thread" or (as in the current example) "the comments here are so $bad_somehow". Recent explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145616 . More: https://hn.algol…

Replies are welcome, but I've collapsed this subthread to prevent the page from going too far off topic. Sorry—I know that my comment is just as off topic. But it has an educational function (at least under optimistic assumptions) and that requires people seeing it.

Let's clone dang and employ the clones as moderators for all forms of social media. We will of course pre-program them for compliance.

We can replace one moral quandary with another, much darker, one, which is a boon because it is something to talk about. And we've solved twitter.

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